A Passage of Life
by Finding Beauty
Summary: Nini isn’t certain what to call it. Their relationship doesn’t have a name any more than he does. NA&Nini ficlet, for Black Tangled Heart.


**Disclaimer**: _Moulin Rouge_ is owned by many lovely people who are not me. I would like to claim such brilliance as that as my own, but alas, I cannot. (And shall not, for fear of being sued.) No copyright infringement is intended. 

**Author's Notes**: My first appearance in the fandom with something new in ... well, entirely too long of a time. At the request of Black Tangled Heart and dedicated to her as well as the artist formerly known as Petal; a bit of heartening proof that perhaps my muse isn't entirely dead, though I feel my handling of the pairing may be a bit awkward. The title is a bit of double meaning—an actual passing of a life (Satine), and a passage out of another (Nini). 

* * *

**A Passage of Life**

The day of the funeral, it rains. The sky opens up and pours down on the paltry assembled crowd, Bohemians in tattered black and a writer that vies with the weather to see who can shed the most tears. It mixes with the winter's first fallen snow, creates slush and the sort of sticky mud that clings to their shoes all the way up to the ankles and freezes hard as soon as they lift their feet off the ground again. 

Bitch of a cold and miserable day, but Satine never could go out without making a big deal of it. Marie says that the heavens weep for the loss of her. Nini believes more likely that there is no reason for angels to cry over the death of a whore. They chose a cemetery on a hill to bury her, one with cracked headstones and a rusty wrought iron fence and a gate that creaks when it swings. But there is a tree, apple or cherry or something Nini isn't quite sure of, and a priest who dolorously reads the words while the pages of his prayer book are whipped, saturated in the wind. 

Afterward she is left feeling as if she will never be warm again, soaked to the bone and looking, she is sure, like a drowned rat. The mud sucks at her feet as she walks in a wide berth around the grief-stricken writer, headed back to a home that, soon, will no longer be there anymore. Her steps carry her right into _his_ path. 

He is a tall pillar of calm and comfort, unmovable when everything else turns upside down and spins on its head. Another facet of her reckless little world, passionate and ruthless but solid, and everything she secretly fears. He touches her elbow even as she tries to avoid him; strong fingers tangle in the flowered lace of her shawl and catch there when she tries to pull free. 

His eyes are dark in the gloomy grey winter light, like coal embers waiting to start the fire anew. She wants to say no, wants so much to reject him, but it's cold, so cold, and a shudder runs down her spine as she crumples into his arms and presses a hand against his heart and the crucifix that lies across it, still warm. 

Nini isn't certain what to call it. Not even as he supports her against the wind and rain and brings her into the shelter of his arms and his bed. Their relationship doesn't have a name any more than he does, but he is full of words even if there are none to describe their affair. She knows what to do with him even less than she knows what to do with herself, and maybe that's the point. But still she vows not to become like Satine, trophy whore in a shallow grave. 

She keeps making the futile vow while lying tangled in damp sheets. While he whispers _te amo_ in foreign tongue like the pick of gossamer guitar strings and she sighs at the words. 

—I don't love you, she replies flatly, and he laughs and makes her all the angrier. But of course she doesn't, isn't that the rule? Don't fall in love? I hate you, she adds for good measure. 

—And perhaps I you, he says. What would you say to that, _mi amor_? 

—Stop calling me that, is what. 

He laughs again and she thinks very much that she should like the willpower to slap him and throw him out of the bed. Then she remembers the bed is his and she sleeps below the floor where a dead woman walks. And she fears, so desperately fears, that she will end up just like her, just like Satine, weak and in love and—as he kisses her—so much more fulfilled. 

Nini leaves Montmartre, after a while, when the Moulin Rouge is closed and its red windmill wings have begun to fade to grey. He goes with her, of course, because that's how stories work. He's damned stubborn and, she states frequently and loudly, she supposes that means she's stuck with him. A few years pass and they open a school, dedicate it to their love of dance. 

He treats her like glass (the tough sort that doesn't break on scuffed wooden floors) and she never quite grows used to it. They don't get married, because that's simply not them. Eventually the past settles itself into the back of their existence and she glimpses it only in the dark eyes of a curly-haired child who has his passion for life. 

Hardly anyone she knows now remembers Nini Legs-in-the-Air. She's Madam Nini and children use their manners around her, yes ma'am and no ma'am, and she still gets a chuckle out of it every now and then. She doesn't hang the painter's paintings on her wall (he's too famous after death for her to afford anyway) and she doesn't buy the writer's novel or save the newspaper clippings that detail a nobleman's marriage. 

But every now and then she does return to the weedy hilltop grave of a woman who isn't quite forgotten (but not quite remembered, either) and admit that maybe there was something to all that come what may stuff after all. Wherever she is, Satine knows it, of course. 

She always was a bit smug like that. 

_fin_


End file.
